A brother remembers…

Category Archives: yesteryear

Super Bowl XLVIII is here. I’ve watched plenty of Super Bowls. The funny thing is, for all the ga-jillions of dollars spent on advertising and hype during the two weeks leading up-to and during the game, I only remember a handful of them. I don’t know if that means advertisers are not doing a good job or if I just have a rotten memory. I think it means there are more important things than the game itself, at least to me.

“I worked out with a dumbell yesterday. I feel vigorous!” –Frank to Estelle, in Seinfeld

“You know what I’d do if I were you?” he said, after I had thanked him for a gift he’d given me for Christmas last year and we were talking about how and where I was going to use it.

“What?”

“I’d put up a pull-up bar in the basement. Then you could just workout right here at home.”

“Yeeeeaaahhhhhh! Then whenever y’all come over, we can just workout in the basement.”

“Yeeeeaaahhhhhh!

I purchased the pull-up bar shortly after he passed away, but it sat there unassembled for months. I finally managed to put it up a few weeks ago. It’s pretty awesome. It’s just a pull-up bar, but I have a certain reverence for it.

“Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we’ve grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it’s not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing.” –Seinfeld

On this date last year I was participating in some training sessions for my company. For three whole days I was offsite at another office location in midtown, on the West Side. The cool thing about it, other than getting a reprieve from my usual duties, was that my brother worked only a few blocks away from where I was now located. We always met up a few times a month for lunch, but usually not 3 days in a row. We hung out the day before for lunch at some pizza shop around the area that also sold beer. Needless to say, beer + bro + pizza = a good time.

“And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

We like books. Not so much novels (though I do read them sometimes and Louis had been somewhat of a Stephen King fan at one point or another, as well as an Anne Rice fan) but usually informational books: science books, certain how-to books, etc. My kids enjoy books too. There is an uproar if we skip reading them a bedtime story. And I know my nieces enjoy books too (more on that in another post). I’m glad it runs in the family. I have a particular obsession with my books. I like them to remain as new as possible: no creases, bends, markings, rips/tears, etc. I flip-out if someone mishandles them – really flip-out. My brother was aware of my obsession and told me I’d get over it one day:

When I ran the Super Spartan Race last month, my goal wasn’t to win. I just wanted to be sure I would be able to finish while not killing myself. That meant I had to prepare.

The Spartan Race publishes daily WOD (Workout of the Day) routines via email. Anyone can subscribe. They offer suggested routines to help prepare for the race and to stay fit. I often get ideas from these and incorporate them into my own. Here’s one of my favorites – I call it, the Spartan Fox:

I’ve been spending more time recently on my blog: writing, reading, exploring. The more I look around the more I realize something’s missing. My brother said that your blog is your home. If that’s true, then mine looks as if I just moved in: no furniture, so to speak – Something’s needed…

“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.” –Marilyn Monroe

Look closely at my shoes (bottom pic). They hardly look like shoes at all (they hardly feel like them either.). I didn’t know what the hell to wear regarding footwear. Trail running is new to me (hell, running, period, is new to me). I knew whatever shoes I wore would get muddy and that they’d get soaked with water from all the mudpits. Who the hell wants to be sloshing around in water-logged shoes? Not me, for sure. So the way I saw it, I had a choice: run in my Nike Free+ 3’s, dust off my old basketball shoes and run in those, buy a pair of trail running shoes, or go with my Vibram FiveFingers (running in my brand new Brooks Ghost 6 shoes definitely wasn’t an option). I debated all the way up to the final few hours.

“It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force… but by our skills with a lightsaber.” –Count Dooku to Master Yoda, in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

All the fuss about the new Star Trek movie and the next Star Wars film reminds me of when Episode I came out back in 1999. My brother and I were super duper excited. Prior to that, the only Star Wars flick I had seen in the theaters was Episode VI, with my family, when I was about 7 years old. 20 years later, my brother and I were amped to see the prequels. We weren’t big movie-heads, but when it came to Star Wars and the like we were sure to go watch it on the big screen, together. I’ll always remember going to those midnight showings with my brother. Even if the movies weren’t great, the experience of seeing them with him was.